Stockbrokers and brokerage houses (i.e., a stock brokerage or brokerage) continue to purchase and sell securities for investors, notwithstanding the growing popularity of online securities trading. As is well known, when an investor buys a security, the brokerage acts on the investor's behalf to purchase the security but the investor eventually pays the brokerage for the purchase price. When an investor sells a security, the proceeds of the sale pass through the brokerage to the investor, but many investors often choose to leave funds with a stock brokerage in a client brokerage account. A client brokerage account is well known to be a record of the client's purchases and sales of securities and other money market instruments, debits and credits of monies as well as funds and securities held in the account, where among other things, a client's funds are kept available for use by the investor.
Although funds in a client's brokerage account are protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (S.I.P.C.) under certain circumstances, and in some cases, interest bearing, S.I.P.C. protection is limited and the rate of return provided by brokerages is usually less than the interest offered by banks, whereat account balances are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (F.D.I.C.). A method and apparatus for managing funds held in a brokerage account of a client of a stock brokerage whereby such funds could earn interest and be insured would be an improvement over the prior art.